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Winner of the 2014 Bisexual Book Award for erotic fiction, author Adriana Kraft is a married couple. We write our erotic stories to entertain, of course, but most of all we write them because we believe in happy endings for all who fall in love, whatever their gender, sexual orientation or numerical combination.

Manless in Montclair

by Amy Holman Edelman

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Blurb:

Being short with big boobs means living life off-balance. Isabel knows this all too well; at five feet nothing with a tendency to tip over in heels, she’s struggled for twenty-five years to make clothes, careers and boyfriends fit. Enter Michael. Divorced father, recovering alcoholic and fifteen years her senior–he was the last guy she thought would make the cut. But when he proposed over a pastrami sandwich in a NYC deli on the anniversary of their first date, Isabel knew, improbably, that he was the one.

Fifteen mostly happy years and two kids later, Isabel walks into her living room to discover her husband dead on the floor, leaving her a widow at forty-one. At Micheal’s funeral, a guest solemnly informs her that the official mourning period for a Jewish widow is thirty days. At the moment, Isabel can’t imagine a time when she will stop grieving. Not helping the process is this: as a single mom living in the very married suburbs, for the first time in fifteen years Isabel once again just doesn’t fit in.

It takes her four year-old daughter’s request for a new daddy to set Isabel on a journey through online dating, shifty matchmakers and painfully orchestrated single dinners. But after endless dates, a torrid affair with an unemployed, passive-aggressive neighbor and a story on page three of the New York Daily News, Isabel begins to realize that another man may not be the answer and, surprisingly, that’s when things begin to change for the better…

EXCERPTS

Excerpt 1:

Our blue and white paisley duvet lay crumpled on the bed, but Michael was no longer under it. The air conditioner beckoned me with a loud rumble, and I stood in front of it for a moment, letting the stale breeze cool my skin. Sufficiently chilled, I turned and walked back down the hall into the heavier air of our living room. It was then that I saw him, lying at the foot of the green overstuffed chair, a few inches away from his favorite perch on the well-worn, beige linen sofa. Except for the small pool of blood that had formed on the rug beside his head, he looked as if he might still be sleeping.

I ran past Michael to the far end of the room, my heart beating hard in my throat. I rummaged through the papers and notebooks that covered my desk in search of the portable phone. Finding it, I dialed 911. After what felt like enough time to grow old in, a dispassionate voice finally came on to the line.

“I think my husband is dead,” I said, shaking. There was no thought. Just words and sweat and panic. “What should I do?”

Excerpt 2:

Charlie put down his drink and took another tack. “Are you familiar with that Nietzsche theory?”

“Which one?”

“The one that says ‘Whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger’?”

“I’ve heard it, yes. Why?”

“I think that whatever doesn’t kill us just eats us alive…bit by bit…until at the end, all we need is a dent in the car or…” He looked directly at me and continued: “…a lousy-ass guy to push us over the edge.”

“So what? Are you saying you’re a lousy-ass guy? Or are you just afraid I’ll end up with one?”

He paused for a minute. Then, as if in answer to my question, he sat up, leaned over, and kissed me. He was hesitant at first, as if his lips were trying to find exactly the right place to settle on mine.

And then they did.

The kiss was passionate, needy, questioning. I breathed him in as if he were oxygen. He put his arms around me and pulled me to the floor, his hands touching my face, my breasts, my hips. I held on to him for dear life while the rolling Cuban rhythm of Buena Vista Social Club wafted in the air like perfume.

Excerpt 3:

“So what number are you up to now?” my mom asked over dessert at a nearby restaurant. She had stopped for an early dinner after meeting a client in New York and was taking advantage of the few minutes we had alone while the kids were in the bathroom.

“What do you mean ‘what number’?”

“You know…how many men?”

Uh-oh, I thought. “Why do you ask?”

“Well,” she said, leaning in confidentially, “I heard somewhere that dating is really just a numbers game. The twenty-eighth guy you meet,” she said, “will be the one.”

“Really? What about the first twenty-seven?”

“I don’t know. Practice?”

“Hmmm. Do I have to date ’em only once? Or do they only count if they’re a multiple date?”

“Gee,” my mother said thoughtfully, tapping her manicured fingernails on the tablecloth. “I’m not sure.”

“And do I have to sleep with the twenty-seven prior to number twenty-eight? Or just maybe dinner?”

“Well…maybe dinner and a movie.”

“Does coffee count?”

Bio:

Amy Holman Edelman lives in New Jersey with her husband, children and Irish Jack Russell, Roxy. She is the also author of The Little Black Dress (’97).